


frames

by keycchan



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: 5 Times, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-07 22:33:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11068476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keycchan/pseuds/keycchan
Summary: i. run —ii. it's cold out —iii. if we die, we die together —iv. you made it —v. where's the milk?prompt: things you said while holding my hand.





	frames

**Author's Note:**

> for the fic request on tumblr! requested by [deaconidolizesyou.](http://deaconidolizesyou.tumblr.com/) find the [original prompt here.](http://keycchan.tumblr.com/post/161263696230/prompts-1-things-you-said-at-1-am-2-things)
> 
> i think i am incapable of writing short fics lmao
> 
> sort of occurs in a similar universe to share your road, but there are some differences, so it's not going within the same series category.

1.

 

“ _Run!”_

 _Hey now_ , Adust barely manages to think, before he feels rough hands pulling him, forward, a jerk of a tug that nearly dislocates his shoulder  — no time to think any more than that as an explosion goes off behind them, blinding light casting sharp contrasts, ash and shrapnel flying, and it’s a miracle they’re unscathed as MacCready drags him behind an overturned slab of concrete.

MacCready’s eyes are furious, piercing blue as they peer over the edge, watching the raiders search for them. Adust’s heart is pounding a mile a minute. Behind his gasmask, he catches his breath, and his head pounds, vision still swimming from where one of the raiders had swung a metal pipe right at his head earlier. He thinks he can feel something trickling down the back of his neck. He wonders if it’s blood.

MacCready’s still holding his hand. It’s oddly more comforting than he’d imagined it’d be.

“What were you  _thinking_? You could’ve gotten yourself  _killed!”_ MacCready hisses, those frigid blues staring right at him. Cat-scowl mouth, dirt smeared on mac’s sharp cheeks. “Watch yourself!”

Adust manages a short smile, at that (and they come so much more often, these days, around MacCready, as Adust adjusts to the Commonwealth and sifts through his grief) and he wonders if MacCready can see it behind the mask. He thinks he’s mildly concussed. He wonders if his smile is less out of humour and more out of his own giddy daze.

“That’s what I hired you for.” Adust murmurs, his vision still swimming.  _Yeah_ , he thinks, _definitely concussed_.

He hears MacCready scoff, but beyond that, behind that anger, he hears it — worry. Feels it, in the way MacCready is still holding his hand, calloused fingers gripping his own like it’ll be enough to tether him to the earth. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. He’s bleeding quite a lot — but he’d had to get hurt, had to dive in, or the raider would’ve gotten MacCready instead. Not a stupid sacrifice. A calculated one.

MacCready squeezes, and he jerks back awake. His head still hurts, but the hurt in his hand keeps him alert.

“Don’t you dare pass out on me. You still owe me a hundred caps for taking this stupid mission, damn it.” MacCready hisses, and Adust is definitely smiling. Loopy, and definitely bleeding. “Eyes on me, we’re going to duck behind this building and see if we can evade these douchebags. And then we’re going to set up camp, and you’re going to get a stimpak whether I have to shove it down your throat or stab it through your skull, got it?”

Adust nods. His head lolls more than it should. He hears a quiet  _damn_  in front of him, and then he feels something warm, pulling him forward, one foot in front of the other.

 _Safe_ , his mind echoes, and then all he focuses on is the hand that’s bringing him home.

 

2.

 

“I hate this.  _Hate_  it. Let me die.”

Adust would laugh, if he didn’t share the exact same sentiment. Seemingly overnight, Boston seems to have grown it’s winter coat, shedding it’s yearlong dust for a blanket of soft, gentle white. Dubiously friendly looking, but not one to be trusted, if the uncomfortable, constant click of his pip-boy’s geiger counter is anything to go by. Not to mention, Adust’s never been fond of the snow. He can handle winter, sure, but the snow makes every trip twice as long, thrice as dangerous, and infinitely more uncomfortable.

Suddenly everything moves that much slower, suddenly everything is just frozen mush, and neither of them are enjoying it. Already they’ve had to make emergency changes to their supplies, and themselves. Frankly, taping the ends of their pants tightly around rims of their boots is an idea he didn’t consider until MacCready, and it’s good, means they won’t get frostbite from soggy socks, but they look just as stupid as they feel. And neither of them have gloves, so if they make it to Bunker Hill with their fingers intact, Adust would chalk it up to a miracle.

In a sense, MacCready’s complaints are almost grounding, and Adust grunts in solidarity. They’re on a Railroad mission — an important one at that, no joke — and walking from Diamond City to Bunker Hill like this? Absolute  _killer_.

“Maybe when we get there, Desdemona will be waiting for us with hot cocoa and a blanket.” Adust offers, very weakly. It sounds pathetic.

MacCready gives him a withering look that could probably shrink whatever’s left of Hancock’s balls. “Sure, and I’m McDonough’s left tit.”

Adust manages a half-laugh at that, one that gets MacCready to twitch a smile too, until —

— slippery, slippery, his foot goes one way and his eyes catch the sky and — 

— a hand grabs his and another lands on the broad of his shoulders, shoves him back upright.

“Uh.” He blinks, dizzily. MacCready looks both worried and miffed. It’s an endearing expression, these days.

“Watch where you’re  _going_ , fu — frickin’  _heck_.” MacCready chastises, scowling, but straightening him out anyway. Hands still linked. “Nearly cracked your skull open on that ice patch.”

Another reason Adust hates this new winter. As if the Commonwealth wasn’t trying hard enough to kill the both of them before. He steadies himself, makes sure he’s back on solid ground. MacCready doesn’t let go of his hand.

“Sorry.” Adust offers, once they start moving again. 

MacCready just huffs, looking away. “Yeah, sure.”

A squeeze around his hand. MacCready’s way of asking,  _is this okay?_  Their fingers are cold, but it’s warming where their palms are touching. Connected.

Adust squeezes back.  _Yeah_.

MacCready leads him forward. “C’mon. It’s cold out.”

 

3.

 

MacCready’s hand grips his. Squeezes, tight, desperate, and Adust does the same back, cold fear lacing their systems. Hoping that holding each other will be enough, this once — hoping it’ll be the last thing they’ll feel before this inevitable end. Their palms are clammy against each other, but their fingers intertwine, and maybe if they die like this it’ll be a better way to go than how others do in the wasteland. If they die, at least it’ll be like this; connected. Loved and together. It’s enough. It has to be enough.

The mirelurk chunks in the aspic  _wibble_ , and Adust feels ten years of his life leaving his mortal coil.

(  _Just try it!_  She’d said.  _Papa says I have a knack for cooking!_

And some tiny, mean part of Adust, way deep in his soul almost wants to say  _tell him that lying is bad_ , but let’s be honest, Adust knows he would never say that. He loves children, and Nina Rodriguez is too pure a child to ever warrant any sort of meanness to. Adust knows he’s weak, and even MacCready’s betrayed look can’t make Adust stop himself. In the end, he’s the accomplice to their own deaths — he’s the one who ends up buying the ‘ingredients’ for the dish, after all, much to the delight of Nina, the amusement of Polly, and MacCready’s sheer dread, though the latter is just as weak to kids and can’t say no either.

Aspic, though. Of all the recipes to be intact in whatever recipe books Diamond City has, Nina chose  _aspic_ , one of the most disgusting things that Adust, in full honesty and acknowledgement of all the trauma he’s been through, regards as  _fortunate_  to have died with the old world. Or so he  _thought_. Foolish, he thinks, foolish to think he’d rid of such an enemy so easily. 

 _There’s absolutely nothing,_ nothing _, that’s appetizing about ‘savoury meat jelly’._  MacCready had harshly whispered, once Nina’s back was turned and out of earshot.

Adust shot back a helpless look.  _Then_ you _tell her father with the custom fatman that we don’t want to taste his daughter’s cooking._

MacCready’s look moves into what Adust can only describe as existential dread, and then Nina is turning around with the bags of molerat fat and spare mirelurk bits, and the same dread settles in the pits of his stomach. )

“I’ll be back soon! Tell me how it is!” Nina had said, beaming, before running off, presumably to grab Nat or something.

The worst part is that there’s no place to even  _hide_  the aspic, if they wanted to. Nowhere to throw, and going outside is out of the question. Nina Rodriguez has a sixth sense when it comes to spotting people in Diamond City. She’d make an excellent sniper, if she weren’t much better at apparently mixing poisons. Adust swallows the lump in his throat, and MacCready’s hand holds onto his just as tightly as he holds it back.

“We have to. We have to do it for Nina. For Arturo.” Adust says, more to himself than to MacCready. “Maybe we’ll be able to trade in favours with him for this. After he comes back from Goodneighbour.”

MacCready’s face is  _pale_ , and there’s cold sweat on his brow when Adust turns to look. Intense blues lock onto his, and out of all their moments — first hug, first kiss, first time sleeping together — this may be the most intimate of them all. The final moments before they both take the leap of faith. Sharing what might just be their last moments together.

“If we die, we die together.” MacCready says. Determination, and fear, in equal measure.

Adust nods. Taps into some of MacCready’s strength, and picks up the spoon, scooping up the cold molerat jelly with mirelurk chunks. MacCready does the same, with his non-dominant hand. Both of theirs are shaking.

Their eyes meet one last time, hands squeezing, and they take the plunge.

 

4.

 

The explosion rocks the earth. It’s the gunshot heard around the world, and Adust is holding the trigger.

By the time it’s over, by the time it’s all settled and they’re back down on solid ground, Adust can still barely believe it’s over. Just one bang and the Institute is gone. He watches with wide, unseeing eyes as the rest of the Railroad filter out and disappear into the evening, undoubtedly celebrating and planning a celebration later on. He sees MacCready and Deacon standing together, presumably telling deacon that Adust won’t,  _can’t_  make it to whatever they have planned. Not tonight. Not for awhile.

He barely registers Deacon walking away, vanishing without a trace into the dark of the Commonwealth evening. The sun is setting, and Adust only sits at the steps to the building, the cold prickling the back of his neck, goosebumps and ash on his skin. It’ll be a long, long while before they stop smelling ozone, before the rain comes mostly clean again.

This should be a victory. He doesn’t know why he feels like he’s lost.

He feels MacCready sit beside him without needing to look. They spend too much time together for Adust to not know every sound the other man makes. He’s grateful for it. He feels something familiar draping around his shoulders — MacCready’s duster, no doubt, ratty and too thin to block out any real form of cold but it’s the thought that matters, and it’s stained with ash and blood. Adust tugs it tighter around himself. Breathes shakily out, watches his breath mist in the air and fade.

“Railroad’s holding some kinda party tonight, probably in Sanctuary. Told ‘em we probably can’t make it.” MacCready says, slow, gentle. Infinitely more patient than the first time Adust was like this, when Adust first came out of the vault disoriented and quiet and MacCready frustrated. Now MacCready just sits close, takes Adust’s hand into his own, warm and calloused and skinny. Holds tight. “Travels should probably be safe tonight. Raiders gonna be too busy wondering what that big boom was to go hunt for scavvers. Should head down to Diamond City or something ‘fore it gets too dark.”

“Okay.” Adust says. Barely a breath. MacCready doesn’t move to stand up, and Adust doesn’t try.

It’s quiet awhile, before he hears MacCready say “Hey.”, and he turns to look at him slowly. Dazed, not quite there,  _was it really me who destroyed the Institute_ , but the thoughts go marginally quiet when he sees the look MacCready is fixing him. Gentle concern, so soft but so strong, patience and understanding and  _love_ , it’s love, Adust knows that now, and then MacCready’s leaning forward, pressing thin, chapped lips against Adust’s temple, cooled sweat and ash. It’s so intimate, so warm. Adust wonders if those are tears slipping down his face or the start of rain.

He shuts his eyes, breathes in shaky, squeezes back MacCready’s hand, when Mac says, “You made it.”

When Mac says, “You’re still here. You made it.”

When Mac says, “Proud of you.”

The gunshot around the world rings it’s echoing silence after the deed, and the hand that holds the trigger drops the gun with shaking fingers, reaching for the other hand that steadies it.

 

5.

 

“Listen, kiddo, if you don’t want me to ground you, go say sorry to Sheng.”

“But he tried to take Nat!”

Adust watches them, smiling, from the top of his place on the ladder. Duncan really  _does_  look like his father, especially like this — pouty, indignant. He has his mother’s eyes, soft golds, but he has his father’s cat-scowl, and it’s about the cutest thing in the world when MacCready squats down to look at his son eye to eye with that same look.

Shaun, on the other hand, probably takes right after Adust, hanging back nervously at the doorway like that, antsy to leave.

“Listen to your dad, Duncan.” Adust finally pipes up, to the surprise of the three of them below. “Sheng could’ve gotten hurt, being pushed into the water like that.”

There’s the cat-scowl again, thin lipped and frustrated, now directed at him. “But he — “

“It’s easy for people to drown, you know. You don’t need a lot of water. If something happened, maybe a cramp or something gets hurt when he gets pushed in, who’s going to save him? What if the DCS aren’t around? Neither you or Shaun can swim either.” Adust points out. Watches as Duncan’s face morphs into one of guilt, and a little fear.

“Was real dangerous, Duncan. You can deal with the Nat thing another time, alright? Go say sorry.” MacCready offers again, gentler.

Duncan mumbles a tiny apology, before darting off, dragging Shaun with him, who looks just a little comedically helpless behind his step-brother. Adust grins, as MacCready straightens back up, snorting.

“Man, I hope I wasn’t  _that_  dramatic as a kid.” MacCready says, shutting the door behind the children, knowing they’re in safe hands out there with the DCS patrols.

“I don’t know, Mac. According to Joseph you sounded pretty dramatic to me.” Adust points out, laughing a little when MacCready rolls his eyes goodnaturedly. He tries his best to imitate the scowl, crossing his arms just so. “ _Just give it a shot, mungo! You’ll see plenty of my adult-sized stones when I’m pissing on your grave_!”

MacCready snorts loudly, shoving Adust lightly. “Do  _not_  bring that up, man  — and I don’t sound like that, what the hell?”

“Just telling it like it was told to me.” Adust grins. Uncrosses his arm, takes MacCready’s hand in his. MacCready squeezes back.

“Christ, I hope Duncan doesn’t catch the mouth I had. Lucy’ll probably come back from the grave to throw a frag at me for it.” MacCready rolls his eyes, though he’s smiling.

Adust smiles, too. It’s easier to think about that sort of thing, these days. MacCready talking about Lucy, Adust talking about Jennifer. It’s not so bad, anymore. Never forgotten, but laid to rest. Focusing, instead, on the family they have now — built together, with each other, himself and MacCready and Duncan and Shaun, safe within Diamond City, though they’ll be moving out to Sanctuary once Shaun and Duncan finish their education, the place now officially one of the safest, small settlements around, and well resourced. Sturges had said to wait for his OK to come back, though. Adust wonders if the man is doing something with his old house.

It doesn’t matter too much. It’s cliche, but it works — anywhere with this family, and it’ll be home enough. It will.

Domesticity suits them. It’s a welcome change, in their lives, after the chapter on the Institute closed. Granted, Adust doubts they’ll ever really put down their guns for long — the Wealth hasn’t stopped being full of raiders and muties and ferals and overall bad people, and they still have Minutemen missions to run — but it’s a different thing, these days. Now, they have a home to return to, after the bloodshed is done.

And it’s days like these that make it all worth it. The children having fun in Diamond City, learning and healthy, bright and  _alive —_ some days, Adust still sees MacCready staring at his son, wondering every day how they’d managed to find the cure in time — and both of them. Together, like this, not just surviving, but  _living._

MacCready in casual clothing, shopping for groceries from the stalls, Adust making food and breathing, clear and easy without the gasmask. Spending evenings on the couch just humming along to Diamond City radio, or trading stories from their youths, two worlds so different Adust wonders if they’ll ever run out of stories to trade. Spending nights sleeping together, curled up in each other. Just there. Just happy. Just  _being._

And it’s the best thought to have, to know that someday, this will still  _be_  here. That they’ll still be together. They already know each other so well, and it’s still the most warming thought, to know that this may be the rest of his life. Tradition, as the years go by. Someday, with certainty, they’ll still be doing this gig together, knowing each other inside and out. Adust tracing the sharp line of MacCready’s jaw, knowing every callous and bump of MacCready’s fingers like a well-worn map, MacCready finding infinity in the curve of Adust’s back and spending nights touching silver hair.

One day and they’ll still be like this, but better. And Adust sees tarberry tea, sees nights by the fire, sees themselves but older. Wiser. No longer young and stupid and reckless, but growing old together, softening with age and hopeful peace.

Adust can’t ask for more. This is all he’s ever wanted. And now that it’s here, it’s all he needs. It’s a future that he’s looking forward to.

For once, he can’t wait to grow old.

He smiles gentle, when MacCready comes forward, cups his cheek. Kisses him, like he means the world, and Adust kisses back with just as much sincerity. Soft, chapped, warm. Everything that matters. When they pull apart there’s a moment of quiet, the good kind, and Adust is always glad that they’re roughly the same height, makes it easier to literally see eye to eye. They’re still holding hands. Adust still wants to be holding the same ones, just a few decades away.

“I love you.” Adust says. Head tilting left. “So much.”

MacCready only smiles back. “Yeah, yeah, you sap. Love you too. Now where’d you put the brahmin milk?”


End file.
